


Winter's Warden

by JK Ashavah (ashavah)



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashavah/pseuds/JK%20Ashavah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too much Winter can change a person, and Carlos Ramirez needs to find out just how much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter's Warden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [athenejen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenejen/gifts).



> I loved this prompt so much! Thank you for giving me the chance to play with these two wonderful characters.
> 
> I envisage this taking place during Harry's exile to Demonreach between _Cold Days_ and _Skin Game_.

They say that no good deed goes unpunished, but when the good deed is done by someone as utterly handsome and charming as Carlos Ramirez, sometimes the world decides to pay it back.

That's what he's going to tell himself. And hey, if that's the case, then this should work out just fine, because Molly Carpenter owes him. Still. Molly Carpenter or not, it's not exactly something you do every day to go around whistling up a fairie queen. Fairies are tricky, and the queens most of all. More than that, they're _dangerous_ , and summoning one isn't something to be undertaken lightly by any wizard. In fact, Ramirez has never had cause to do it until now, so he's taken particular care with his preparations, getting all the ingredients ready. It helps that he knows her, or did know her, back when she was a mortal.

Of course, most people didn't conveniently divert Warden resources from tracking down a fairie queen as a fugitive when the Doom of Damocles should have fallen on her. Most people didn't connive with their Warden colleague to try to sway the way justice fell on a fairie queen when she was tried for sorcery. Because there's never, to his knowledge, been a fairie queen like Molly Carpenter. This whole fairie queens who used to be ordinary mortal girls is kinda a new one on him. He'd heard about the changeling Lily, and what had happened to make her the Summer Lady. It was pretty much the sort of story that spread wildly through the impressionable young apprentices whose numbers, then, had included Ramirez.

That was back when Harry Dresden seemed like a man to admire for the crazy way he came out of even the worst situations. Ramirez is a hell of a lot older now than he was then, and he's still got scars and aches from the mess the Fomor made of him. Things have changed since then. Harry Dresden died, and came back, and the Sidhe courts went to hell. The Gatekeeper's told what's left of the White Council and the Wardens that Dresden is back, that he's alive, but it's been a long time since anyone's heard from him, and that makes things not so great for the Wardens. Especially with Los Angeles the mess that it is, the Fomor taking young talents just about at will, and plenty of other cities with situations just as bad, with little Ramirez could do from the sidelines while his injuries healed. There just aren't that many Wardens left that they can spare anyone, least of all Dresden.

Ramirez does everything he can, of course, and then some. But with most of the fighting going on in Europe, there's not a hell of a lot of resources spare for North America. Dresden was a Regional Commander, and with him gone ... okay, so Chicago is still going okay, between what Murphy and the others were doing and, now, the rumors of Dresden's reappearance, but Chicago's one city in the whole United States, and Ramirez is now one Regional Commander.

Dresden's still a Warden, and they need all the Wardens they can get to fight the Fomor.

If, that is, Dresden can be trusted.

That's where Molly Carpenter comes into it.

He can barely believe what he's heard about her. Sure, he knows it's true. There are people who have no reason to lie telling the Council about it. There are plenty of witnesses. It's just hard to think of the scared kid with the bubblegum-shaded hair being one of the most powerful beings in Fairie. Or to think of the hot, sassy apprentice that way either, because there is no denying that last time he saw her, _that_ was what stood out about Molly Carpenter. Girl is _built_.

Thing is, she was just a mortal wizard. The last Summer Lady was a changeling, but Molly was human. Was probably being the operative word now.

Still, Molly Carpenter kind of owes him one, and he needs some advice. After all, it was Ramirez' lack of energy in pursuing her that means she wasn't hunted down by the Wardens when Dresden died. Killing her just wouldn't have been _right_ , and it would have been a hell of a way to honor Dresden's memory. Ramirez had helped Dresden out bringing her case to the Council to start with, he wasn't about to throw it all away like that, especially not when he knew her. But anyway, whatever the reason, girl owes him.

That doesn't make it any less intimidating to call a Queen of Fairie, even if it's one he's known since she was a teenager.

Still, it has to be done, so one he's accounted for all the elements, and for Molly herself, Ramirez speaks her name, methodically, melodically, a simple repetition that he knows will call into the Nevernever to her. And ... he waits.

The first sign of her arrival is a gust of cool air, a whirling wind that passes in a moment, blasting snowflakes with it even in a day that should be far too warm for them,leaving behind it the figure of a woman, clad in a dress of ice blue that shimmers with purples. Ramirez blinks.

It's Molly Carpenter. It's clearly Molly Carpenter. He knows her face, he knows her sturdily, _sexily_ built figure. But she is moving in a way he hasn't seen from her before, alluring, _hot_ , a swing in her hips that inevitably draws attention there.

Hot damn.

He's heard about Winter, of course, Winter and the seductive darkness it carries with it. And hell, he'd even asked Dresden once about Molly and whether she was seeing anyone, mostly out of bravado, but still. The girl was always a looker. Now, she's radiating appeal the same way her arrival had radiated cold, and he's not entirely sure that's her doing. He knows Molly; she'd never shown much real interest in him, or anyone that he'd ever noticed, save maybe her master.

Her eyes are cool as she studies him, and the cloak he's wearing.

"If you think you're here to catch me, you've got a surprise coming," she tells him, her voice dryly amused, a suggestion of laughter in her voice..

She sounds like Molly.

That's more of a relief than he'd thought it would be.

He holds up his hands.

"Not on that sort of business, Lady."

"Well then, what?"

"Harry Dresden."

Something ... stops in Molly's expression. Freezes.

"What about him?"

"I'd hoped you could tell me. He is a Warden. We need him."

"You want me to help the Wardens?" There is outright scorn in her voice now. "The Wardens would have hunted me down and killed me," she says, and a chill wrath creeps into her tone, and with her blue eyes and her hair, long and silvery now, there is something of the cold nobility of Winter in her that is unlike her mortal self, even though her features are precisely the same as they ever were. "The only reason they haven't is that they've been too busy fighting the Fomor."

That's creepy.

"No, Lady," Ramirez says, his words soft.

Damn, he's glad he knew her once. If this was some other Lady of the Fae, he'd be in so deep he'd be underwater. "The reason they haven't is that I didn't want to."

For a moment, it looks like she's about to speak, but she pauses, and then she's Harry Dresden's apprentice again, a little lost, a little confused, with a hell of a lot to learn about the world.

"What do you need?"

"We need Dresden," he says, simply, turning his palms up to the sky. "You know what the Wardens are facing. But he's disappeared. And some people don't think he should even still be a Warden. They don't think he can be trusted."

"The Wardens aren't good at knowing who to trust."

That has something of the petulance of the girl. Or is that Winter, too? He'd heard stories about Maeve, that she could be mercurial and petty, unpredictable at best.

"He is my friend. I want to trust him, but you know him better than just about anyone."

"You know him."

"Do I?"

That's the question. Harry Dresden hasn't been seen on Warden business since he returned from the apparent dead, though the Gatekeeper verified he was truly himself. But Ramirez has spoken to Karrin Murphy, to Butters and to others protecting Chicago, others who have dealt with him more recently. They ... are not so sure. They speak of a darkness, an anger, something not quite Dresden about him.

That puts Ramirez out of his depth. Fairie lore and how this whole Winter powers thing works is not anything he's ever had any experience with.

"He's Harry," she says. 

"Is he? I don't know, Lady. Seems to me like the things that happened to him could change a guy."

She gives a smile, teasingly enigmatic, like some Mona Lisa of snow and ice on pale skin and hair and gown.

"Am I me?"

That is a question he still has no answer to many hours later.

For either Harry or Molly.


End file.
